The last three World Cup cycles have been marked by something with which the U.S. Women’s National Team has never previously dealt: a stable and robust professional domestic league. No such league existed from 1991 - 2000, the first wave of top-level international women’s soccer tournaments. The WUSA was in the middle of collapsing as the U.S. hosted the 2003 World Cup, and the program would return to its 1990s structure for the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics, along with the 2007 World Cup. The 2011 tournament came in the middle of the chaotic final WPS season. The NWSL finally stuck, and was eventually able to thrive without the direct support of U.S. Soccer. The USWNT now operates like any other international program would: as the supplemental training, developmental, financial, and competitive environment for players relative to their clubs.

The NWSL is more important than ever for the production of national team players, particularly since U.S. head coach Vlatko Andonovski made his reputation there. Andonovski has cited on numerous occasions the importance of a player’s form in the league. The likes of Lynn Williams, Kristie Mewis, and Savannah DeMelo secured their spots in Australia and New Zealand because of their performances with their club teams.

The strength of the NWSL has also meant that players who may have deserved and were denied a World Cup or Olympics roster spot—or very good players who are just a cut below international level—have blossomed by the gross. No longer does the U.S. only produce 30 or so players per cycle who are of any quality. They are everywhere now, and they are key elements to the success of their clubs.

I want to highlight those players. With nearly 10 full seasons of NWSL play on the books—seven of which are covered by ASA’s possession value metrics—we can evaluate both the totality of a player’s career as well as its peak. That’s what we’re going to do here.

I’m adapting two career evaluation methods from the men’s baseball world: Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, and the variant developed by Craig Edwards at Fangraphs. These approaches average the total of a player’s career production against the sum of points used to weight individual seasons. We’ll use Goals Added Above Replacement (g+r) to capture a player’s overall value, adjusted for how much better or worse she was against a potential replacement player. Only players to have completed three full seasons were considered (the covid season of 2020 was not counted toward a player’s season total, nor was it factored into the g+r calculations). The postseason was included, but the Challenge Cup was excluded. 2023’s g+r values were normalized via the minutes each player had accumulated in the regular season thus far in order to project a full-season g+r total.

Here are how points are assigned based on the g+r accumulated in each season:

  
g+r   Points  

15+ 20
10-14.9 15
8-9.9 10
7-7.9 8
6-6.9 6
4-5.9 3
2-3.9 1
1-1.9 0.5
0.5-0.99 0.125
0-0.49 0.05
>0 0

A player’s best seasons are given great weight, while points decay rapidly below two g+r. While every season should count for something in a league for which we only have seven seasons to analyze, below-average seasons shouldn’t count for very much. Sub-replacement seasons count for nothing, naturally.

Averaging both total production and seasons by weight ensures that we strike the right balance between career longevity and peak performance. In other words, players who are occasionally galactic receive just as much consideration as those who remain consistently good for several years. In a league whose talent pool can vary widely from season to season—a league that also drove players away due to the working conditions of the pre-CBA environment—this approach is especially attractive.

Here is an example to give you a sense of how the method works:

Cari Roccaro 
  
Season g+r g+r Points
0.8 0.125
2.2 1.0
0.02 0.05
1.0 0.5
0.3 0.05
1.5 0.5
1.0 0.5
Total 6.8 2.7

Roccaro symbolizes this exercise well. She never got close to the national team, but she still made meaningful contributions to the Dash, Courage, Angel City, and Red Stars over the course of six-plus years. She has played 109 of a possible 158 games since 2016, starting 88 of them. She has averaged 78 minutes per appearance. To produce nearly 7 g+r in those 109 games is a classic middle class career. It’s the result of work—graft, some of our friends across the pond might say.

In honor of this type of player, I’m going to call this averaged career production metric the g+raft score.

Averaging Roccaro’s 6.8 total g+r with her 2.7 weighted g+r points yields the g+raft score of 4.8. Not bad! Roccaro never would have had a professional soccer career in America without the presence and stability of the NWSL. Players like her are the true legacy of the league. She gutted it out for years, and now, in the age of the CBA, it has paid off.

Before revealing the XI, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the many great and worthy players who spent most of their careers in the 2013-2015 period of the NWSL’s history, we just don’t have the necessary data to include them.

Now, on to the list!

Forwards

Ashley Hatch

North Carolina Courage, 2017
Washington Spirit, 2018 -
NWSL Rookie of the Year, 2017
NWSL Golden Boot, 2021
NWSL Champion, 2021
18.6 g+raft score

Hatch came so close to missing this list, because she came so close to this year’s World Cup roster. You can understand why. Hatch is a ruthless target striker, who has not only tallied 0.34 non-penalty xG per 96 minutes throughout her career, she did so while playing essentially a full 90 minutes every single game, every single year. The narrowness of her skillset was what kept her off the plane down under, but what Hatch sacrificed in breadth was offset by depth. The job of a number nine is to create space, receive to feet, and finish with clinical sharpness. Hatch’s 0.20 raw Receiving score per 96 minutes is 11th-best among the 64 NWSL forwards who have played at least 2,500 minutes since 2016. She knows what to do in the box. As if you needed further proof, herewith a perfect striker’s goal:

Hatch will be hungry to prove the doubters wrong for the 2024 Olympics, and there’s little reason to think that she won’t.

Midge Purce

Boston Breakers, 2017
Portland Thorns, 2018-2019
Gotham FC, 2021 -
16.1 g+raft score

Purce was in the U.S. mix as recently as last summer, when she played with the team during the CONCACAF W Championship. After all, she has 23 caps and four international goals to her name. Andonovski left her out of the October and November camps due to a perceived “dip in form” in the homestretch of her club campaign. She was back in January and for the SheBelieves Cup in February, but was once again dropped for the April friendlies against the Republic of Ireland. A torn quad shortly thereafter kept her off the field for more than two months, and that was that. Purce will be 31 by the time the 2027 World Cup rolls around, which may be too late for her. It’s the Olympics or bust next year.

That doesn’t diminish her career accomplishments. At her peak, Purce was one of the deadliest strikers in the NWSL. Her 0.41 g+/96 in 2019 put her 8th among all league forwards that year—above Tobin Heath, Carli Lloyd, and Christen Press, it should be noted. Her 0.53 npxG/96 was behind only Sam Kerr and Lynn Williams, a.k.a. the two best scorers in NWSL history. Even now, after possible consistency issues and a serious injury, she is able to control the ball, pass it with great vision, and find space in the box to be ready to pounce on a mistake. This one didn’t go in, but only because of some desperate defending by Bella Bixby.

If Purce can be in fighting shape by next summer, Olympics opponents had better be ready.

Kealia Watt

Houston Dash, 2014 - 2019
Chicago Red Stars, 2021
15.0 g+raft score

Watt nabbed three caps and a goal at the international level, but largely toiled as a loyal servant to her clubs. She had less of the eye-popping flash of her peers, but she was solid as a rock. Watt always produced while also staying on the field wire to wire (barring a 2017 knee injury), generating chances as a tricky 1v1 specialist with a deadly finish. She thankfully got a taste of postseason soccer in her final campaign with Chicago. Watt had artistry and tenacity in spades where most players merely had the latter. In one of the last goals of her career, she combined both.

Midfield

Vanessa DiBernardo

Chicago Red Stars, 2014 - 2022
Kansas City Current, 2023 -
16.8 g+raft score

Tom Sermanni called her up to the USWNT before her rookie season nearly a decade ago, but Jill Ellis shut her out of the player pool for the next few years. By the time Andonovski called her up at the end of 2019, Andi Sullivan had become the favorite to understudy Julie Ertz for the next World Cup cycle. The lack of international development Ellis gave DiBernardo strikes one as short-sighted, given the need for a six in the lead-up to the 2015 World Cup.

What’s remarkable about DiBernardo is how metronomic she has been throughout her entire career. Only once has she had a below-average season, and that was a result of injury rather than a lack of form. She is still able to operate on both sides of the ball, rating as a top-10 career on-ball defender among midfielders by Interrupting/96, and top-5 by Passing/96. Her vision going forward and her destructiveness out of possession was a key part of the Red Stars’ success for all those years. DiBernardo is the exemplar of what a great NWSL career can look like all on its own. Future generations would do well to follow her lead.

Lo’eau LaBonta

Sky Blue FC, 2015
FC Kansas City, 2016 - 2017
Utah Royals, 2018 - 2019
Kansas City Current, 2021 -
10.6 g+raft score

LaBonta’s career came close to ending in 2015 before it had really begun. She made six cameos as a rookie at Sky Blue before being waived. She didn’t sign with another team until May of 2016. She promptly kicked herself into high gear, earning praise from Andonovski at FCKC for her tenacity in defense. She carried that bite through subsequent years, and added some passing vision on top of it. Her 0.10 career expected assists/96 makes her a top-10 provider among central midfielders. Her shot isn’t too shabby, either. Since that fateful signing in May 2016, LaBonta has been at the center of operations for every team she’s played with. An engine room of DiBernardo and LaBonta hasn’t been the cause of the Current’s woes this season; if anything, things would be a lot worse if the two of them weren’t around.

Savannah McCaskill

Sky Blue FC, 2018 - 2019
Chicago Red Stars, 2019
Racing Louisville, 2021
Angel City FC, 2022 -
10.3 g+raft score

McCaskill has been played on the front line, but her real gifts are as a string-puller further back. She has an old-school number 10’s mentality, always looking for seams between the lines to play passes. Her work rate is self-evident. When offense is able to flow through her, success tends to follow her teams. This chance went begging, but it was McCaskill’s control of the ball and the little slip-through pass to Alyssa Thompson that opened up the opposition defense.

Later in the same game, McCaskill made a smart run and then brought the ball down to beat her defender 1v1 and lay off a scintillating pass across the box. Only fate kept it out of the net.

McCaskill has built a career on play like that. It hasn’t always worked in every single game, and she hasn’t always had quality players to pass to. When she’s in her groove, there are fewer metronomes as steady as her.

Fullbacks

Carson Pickett

Seattle Reign, 2016 - 2017
Orlando Pride, 2018 - 2019
North Carolina Courage, 2021 - 2022
Racing Louisville, 2023 -
10.4 g+raft score

Something happened to Carson Pickett in 2022. She was never a bad player, and indeed, she improved her game season after season, becoming a sharper passer and defender as she aged. She had made herself a top-10 career fullback in the NWSL by the end of 2021, and that’s likely underrating her abilities, given g+’s inability to measure off-ball defense at this present stage of its development.

The last almost-two seasons have been something else entirely. She’s been a top-15 on-ball defender among 36 fullbacks who have logged at least 1,000 minutes since the start of 2022, but more impressively, with a 0.10 Passing/96 score, she is now the best passer at the position, full stop. Her 0.24 expected assists per 96 sits comfortably atop that particular leaderboard as well. I mean, look at this. This is unfair.

Pickett was so good last year that Andonovski tossed her a couple caps, but come World Cup selection time, he instead went with a mix of Emily Fox, Sofia Huerta, and Kelley O’Hara to fill out his fullback slots. How he couldn’t have considered Pickett is beyond me.

Caprice Dydasco

Washington Spirit, 2015 - 2018
Sky Blue/Gotham FC, 2019 - 2022
Houston Dash, 2022 -
7.9 g+raft score

I’m cheating a bit here by including Dydasco. Though Arin Wright beats her on g+raft score by a couple of integers, I wanted a dedicated right back in here. Thus, Dydasco. And I have no problem with that. Look up “workhorse” in the dictionary, and you might find Dydasco’s face. Since she became a starter in 2016, Dydasco has never dipped below 1,200 minutes in a season. Out of 46 fullbacks who logged at least 2,500 minutes since 2016, her 0.06 Interrupting/96 score puts her in the top 15. Her passing isn’t too far behind. Her 0.08 expected assists per 96 is top-20 among fullbacks in the last seven seasons. She has ground her way through a lot of teams who don’t always sparkle, but she has just kept moving, up and down the right flank, back and forth. She may never stop.

Center Backs

Lauren Barnes

Seattle Reign/Reign FC/OL Reign, 2013 -
7.0 g+raft score

As noted earlier, g+ can’t measure off-ball defense. No current metrics can, really. So I’m relying less on precise ranking of defenders’ g+raft scores and more on their roles as good servants of the league, so long as their ratings are in the top quartile. By these criteria, Barnes is an obvious pick. She is one of only 11 players to have played every single NWSL season, including 2020. Of those 11 players, only four have never gone to the Olympics or the World Cup; Barnes is one of them. Perhaps most extraordinary of all is that Barnes is one of only two players to have played all 11 of those seasons with the same team. (The other one, naturally, is teammate Jess Fishlock.)

It doesn’t stop there. Barnes has never played fewer than 1,800 minutes in a full season. Only two players have logged more minutes than her since 2016. She is now 34 years old and is still doing this. Oh, and did I mention that she switched to left back in 2021, in her age-32 campaign? She shouldn’t be gaining fitness and work rate at this point in her career. Nobody should. Barnes’s passing range is a key reason why she was moved out wide, especially in the age of the attacking fullback. Her 0.07 Passing/96 score is third among fullbacks since 2021.

That’s a 34-year-old. Who converted to fullback. Who has to run on artificial turf 13 times a year. And she’s doing the job exceptionally. You just don’t find players like this in the women’s game.

Barnes is also savvy enough to have earned her defensive reputation off the ball, which means the stats almost certainly underrate her. And even if they didn’t, only she and 10 others can lay claim to being the most NWSL player of all time. It has been a singular career, and it shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

Sam Staab

Washington Spirit, 2019 -
NWSL Champion, 2021
11.1 g+raft score

Setting aside the fact that Staab hasn’t missed a single minute of action since she debuted (well, she’s technically missed about 99 out of a possible 8,256) she can also do this:

Her 0.08 career Passing/96 score sets her comfortably atop the positional heap. Can you think of another center back who is their team’s dead ball specialist?

Staab is also outstanding with the ball at her feet, averaging the highest progressive carry distance for center backs this season. As the clip amply demonstrates, she can carry from deep in midfield into the opposing half and then drop a pass on a dime for (an admittedly offside) Trinity Rodman.

Simply put, Staab is world-class. The Washington Spirit and their fans have known it for a long time. You wonder if, given the injury-driven paucity of options in the U.S. central defense, perhaps Andonovski would have been well served to call Staab in at any point in the last four years. She deserved it. No matter; she is quickly becoming the face of what this whole list represents: the NWSL grafter.

Goalkeeper

Michelle Betos

Seattle Reign/Reign FC, 2013, 2018 - 2019
Portland Thorns, 2014 - 2016
Racing Louisville, 2021
Gotham FC, 2022 -
31.7 g+raft score

The astronomical g+r values keepers accrue are a testament to the do-or-die nature of the job. If you’re good at it, you’re irreplaceable. If you’re bad at it, you’ll never get another starting gig again. While there are two keepers with higher g+raft scores than Betos, the paradoxical nature of her career merits this recognition. Betos has never been a bad keeper, but she hasn’t always been able to latch on as a starter for any extended period of time. She has played only 86 games since 2013, and yet, she has been excellent in just about all of them. There’s the famous at-the-death corner kick header to equalize for the Thorns at home in 2015 (a feat improbably matched in every respect by Bella Bixby eight years later); there are the extraordinary saves, which she can still pull out of her locker; and there is the five-alarm-fire aggression with which Betos plays at all times. You can see her shotstopping and her mania all in one highlight.

Betos reminds one of the Tasmanian Devil when in goal. She tore the pitch apart to prevent you from scoring, and more often than not, she was successful at it. Coaches and GMs were never convinced that she could do it from one end of the season to the other. No matter; when she did do it, there were few better.

Honorable Mention

Simone Charley

Portland Thorns, 2019 - 2021
Angel City FC, 2022 -
9.4 g+raft score

Charley epitomizes the concept of the super-sub. Not once in her four NWSL seasons has she ever been used as a consistent starter. She has played in 53 out of a possible 87 games for her clubs, and has averaged a mere 54 minutes in those appearances. Granted, some of those games were missed due to injury, but the closest she ever got to the XI were the 11 starts she made for Portland in their Shield-winning campaign in 2021. Charley has played less than 3,000 minutes in four seasons. Nobody at her level of per-96-minute production has been on the field so infrequently.

That’s the sub part of the equation. Now, on to the super element. Charley may be one of the best pound-for-pound . nines the league has ever seen. Her 0.37 Receiving/96 score in 2021 is the highest single-season mark of all time. Only Sam Kerr beats her on the career Receiving/96 charts. It turns out that being a college track star may come in handy in this area.

Charley is also a top-10 career finisher by Shooting/96, and a top-five dribbler by Dribbling/96. Her 0.42 npxG/96 places her in the career top-five for chance quality. All of her skills are beautifully illustrated in this direct attack from that record-setting 2021 season.

By all three forms of g+/96, Charley is the fourth-best NWSL player of all time among the 201 outfield players who tallied at least 2,500 minutes since 2016. Forget the rate stats: Charley’s 11.7 career g+r places her 56th out of 577 NWSL outfield players since 2016. Nobody above her has accrued as few minutes as her.

There must be some reason why the Thorns and Angel City brain trusts haven’t wanted Charley as a more regular part of their plans. She is the greatest striker in the NWSL when she’s on the field; who cares if that’s only for 20-50 minute bursts? When she does things like what you just watched, you shouldn’t.

Bench

Forwards

Kristen Hamilton, 15.6 g+raft score
Shea Groom, 14.0 g+raft score
Morgan Weaver, 12.7 g+raft score
Bethany Balcer, 12.7 g+raft score

Midfield

McCall Zerboni, 9.5 g+raft score
Taylor Kornieck, 8.9 g+raft score
Danielle Colaprico, 8.5 g+raft score

Defenders

Arin Wright, 9.8 g+raft score
Amber Brooks, 7.9 g+raft score
Kaleigh Kurtz, 7.6 g+raft score

Goalkeepers

Katie Lund, 37.5 g+raft score
Abby Smith, 32.5 g+raft score

American Soccer Analysis

The Best NWSL Players Never to Make a Major Tournament Roster, According to g+